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Gil Yefman

By deconstructing and transforming canonized familiar myths from varied beliefs and traditions, and creating fantastic realms where characters with elusive gender, sexual and political identities serve as alternative cultural heroes – I try to challenge and undermine the structured definitions and portrayal of the “other”, in order to explore and cherish the intrinsic potential of the extraordinary. Through a manifold spectrum of practices and media, and with a prevalent predilection for the craftswomanship of crochet knitting, I indulge in the therapeutic virtues of knitting as means to dwell on personal and collective traumas, as well as to reflect upon recurrent obsessive patterns in mankind's societies. The act of knitting resembles writing: long, rapid, carefully calculated and monotonous movements, a collection of syllables that create a narrative, the object. The texts and contexts become textures that suggest an alternative examination, reflection and interpretation to dogmatic translations.
Yefman graduated from Bezalel Academy for Art and Design, Jerusalem in 2003, and received a two year fellowship at the Alma program for Jewish culture studies, 2008-2010. He is the Rappaport Prize laureate for young Israeli artist, 2017, and awarded ​"The Young Artist Prize” given by the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Science, 2010. Residencies programs include ​The Aomori Contemporary Art Center, Japan 2015, IDA Schir Residency, Hannover 2014, Fountainhead Residency, Miami 2014, Artist residency, granted by the NRW Kunststiftung and The Bronner Family, Düsseldorf 2011-12. His works are present in several private and public collections, among which: The Jewish Museum, NYC, The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Tel Aviv Museum of art, Herzliya Museum of art, Shoken Family Collection, Tel Aviv, The Bronner Family Collection, ​Düsseldorf​, and private collections. Selected solo exhibitions include​: “Kibbutz Buchenwald”, Tel Aviv Museum of Art 2018, “Body Of Work”, Haifa museum of art 2017, “The Third Dress”, ​Dana art gallery, Yad Mordechai Kibbutz 2016, ​“To Me You Are Beautiful - Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn”, Ronald Feldman Fine Art, NYC 2014, “H” The Container, Tokyo 2013, "In Return", Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv 2011. Selected group exhibitions include​: "​ Dread & Delight", Weatherspoon art museum, NC, 2018, “The Queer Biennale - What If Utopia”, L.A. 2018,​ “Violated: Women in Holocaust and Genocide”, Ronald Feldman Gallery, NYC, 2018, ​“Woven and Untangled”, Tel Aviv Museum 2017, "(SIGNAL)", Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY 2016, "Kumzitz", KIT museum, Düsseldorf 2016, “​Passage - A Day In Eternity", Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Aomori, 2015, ​“Otherness - I Is Somebody Else”, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris 2013, “About Stupidity” Petach Tikva Museum of Art 2013, “Galicia Mon Amour”, "Body Without Body", Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin 2011, “Animamix Biennial – Attract and Attack”, MOCA museum, Taipei, 2009.
Gil Yefman is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Art, NYC.
Gil Yefman

works

Tumtum

2012 knitting, Faraday cage, Sound, additional performance 200X200X200 cm

…(Not solely the Lepers, bull all who corrupt man must cry out for all to hear, that they are unclean, so that they will be given wide berth “and shall cry, Unclean, unclean”, Leviticus 13:45. The unclean informs that he is unclean. And Tumtum and Androgynous tears and rips and covers his upper lip as well, for he is in Doubt.) Leprousy Halacha 10 (Jewish Law), Mishna L’Torah, Rambam.

Etymologically, the source of the word ‘Tumtum’ is a combination of sealed and unclear, ambiguous, used to describe an androgynous with unclear genitalia – meaning genitalia that perform and especially look different from others’.
Thanks to Rambam’s Halachaic deliberations, especially regarding the laws of Kashrut, Tumtum has acquired the dubious phonetic connotation of Tum’aa...

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